


It Burns Me Still

by INMH



Category: Zero: Akai Chou | Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly
Genre: Aftermath, Angst, Drama, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Game(s), Survivor Guilt, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-29
Updated: 2011-05-29
Packaged: 2019-06-27 07:02:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15680391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: A year later, Mio still feels the burn of Mayu's absence.





	It Burns Me Still

One year.

Mio's grown her hair out. It's down to her waist. She still wears skirts and cute tops, but hasn't touched the outfit she was wearing…

Then.

She has new clothes to replace the outfits that she and Mayu had bought pairs of, for those days when they'd felt like milking the whole "identical twin" thing.

It didn't feel right to wear them. Not without the matching pair at her side.

It doesn't feel right, turning and not having that presence with her. It makes her feel like half of her heart's been hacked off and lost forever.

Being alone is bad. Horrible. And even when she's at school, or downtown, or in the middle of the mall, that's how she feels: Alone.

It was even worse breaking the news to their parents.

She hadn't told them the truth, oh no. They would've thought she was insane. But she did tell them that Mayu was gone.

Both Mr. and Mrs. Amakura had taken her words to mean that Mayu was missing, and Mio didn't clarify. One, they wouldn't have believed the explanation, and two…

She just couldn't do that to them.

Let them think Mayu was alive somewhere. Let them have that. The belief wasn't hurting anyone.

There was an investigation, formally, into Amakura Mayu's disappearance, but with All God's Village disappearing again and any and all evidence with it, the case went cold.

And with time, Mio began to accept that Mayu was gone.

But acceptance or not, Mayu's presence (Or rather, lack thereof) still haunted her sister.

Mio's dreams were filled with bloodstained walls, three sets of twins and endless clouds of crimson butterflies that swirled around her and obscured her vision.

Some dreams were happy; Dreams with Azami and Akane, Itsuki and Mutsuki, and Sae and Yae. In the good dreams, Itsuki's hair is black again, and Sae is laughing happily rather than insanely, and Azami and Akane are happy and giggling and holding hands. They all are.

And Mayu's there too, and Mio always curls her arms around her sister's shoulders and begs her forgiveness, and she always gets it.

Then she wakes up, knows it's a dream, and weeps not only for Mayu and herself, but for the others whose lives were ruined by that god-forsaken ritual.

The bad dreams are…

Bad.

And that's an understatement.

In the bad ones, the rooms are covered in blood. She sees horrifying images of twin ten year-old girls, one's hands wrapped around the other's neck, and the priest in the veil coming to help when the murdering twin's strength just isn't enough. She wants to run over and stop him and take the two girls by the hands and lead them away, to a place where they never have to kill.

_why kill?_

_why kill?_

_why kill?_

_why kill?_

She sees Itsuki staring mournfully from his prison, his hair white, as though bleached, from the agony of losing his brother. She wants to smash the doors to the storehouse open and free him so he can run and they can be lonely together.

_I don't want you and Yae to go through what we went through._

She sees Yae running away, and Sae wailing and screaming for her sister to come back before slaughtering the villagers and laughing (Or maybe it's sobbing. Mio can't tell anymore).

_Don't leave me alone!_

And in the bad dreams, it's no longer just Sae that's laughing like a madwoman, but Mayu, and she's always covered in blood too. Sometimes she doesn't laugh, but just stares at Mio with big, blank eyes and asks,

_Why?_

_Why did you go?_   
  
_Why did you leave me here?_

_Please don't leave me, Mio._   
  
_I'm scared._

_Don't leave me alone._

_Didn't we promise we'd be together forever?_

She always wakes up screaming.

In a possibly self-abusive twist, she's taken up photography.

The Camera Obscura is locked away in a box in the back of her closet, but it always feels closer than that, easier to get to than that. It always seems like it's calling to her, even though (To her knowledge) there's really no use for it now. The only reason she doesn't bury it in a ditch, burn it or stomp on while screaming out her pain is because something tells her it could be useful later on.

Her new camera is a normal one. Takes average pictures of average things rather than things that shouldn't be there.

And she tells herself she's perfectly fine with that.

Because what kind of life would she have if she kept using that camera in hopes of catching sight of her twin's spirit watching over her?

One day she goes to the park.

It's a pretty big one, with a fair amount of trees that create a peaceful scene in the summer light. Children play some ways away, but they never enter the viewfinder of her camera.

The mood is peaceful.

The air is calm.

The trees are so tall, and they create shadows on the ground that aren't even slightly intimidating. She wants to capture this moment. Wants to remember that moments like this do exist, and they should be enjoyed, because you never knew when something nightmarish and tragic that would haunt you forever would happen.

That's when she sees it.

The image by the tree that's so familiar she doesn't register it at first. The image of a girl in a brown and white dress with a black shirt on underneath.

Mio's eyes widen, and she jerks her head up with a gasp to look directly at her sister.

But Mayu's not there.

Instead, a sparkling butterfly with crimson wings is fluttering in the light breeze without a care in the world.

" _Mayu!_ "

She runs from the camera, not caring that someone could just as easily come by and steal the equipment.

She runs towards the butterfly, wanting to get near it, want to see if it reacts to her, wants a sign of something, be it forgiveness or sadness or anger or contentment or comfort in any form, anything at all!

"Mayu! _Mayu!_ "

And for a moment, it seems as though the butterfly does stop, maybe even twitch towards her a little.

But then it just flutters away, always out of Mio's reach.

And when it disappears from her sight completely, The Remaining, the only Remaining, now, falls back against the nearest tree, slides down and puts her face in her hands so she can sob.

-End


End file.
